Sue Foley Delivers Blues Tour-de-Force Performance in Salmon Arm
by Miles Overn
I'm still not quite sure how anyone can blow the roof off an outdoor festival, but that is exactly what Sue Foley and her trio accomplished with their Salmon Arm Roots & Blues performance on Saturday night. It will go down as one of the great shows in the history of the 27 year old music fest.
It takes either massively virtuosic chops or incredible personality to pull off the whole trio thing well. Sue Foley possesses and displayed both as she tours in support of last year's "The Ice Queen" release. She was fully present and in command of the stage at and all the way through every
moment. Foley strung those moments together with a fuidity and sensuality that was a delight to watch through the lens of my camera as I attempted to capture the essence of this artist in this act of living out her art.
The bonafide guitarslinger spent most of the night in front of 13,000 fans working her trademark pink paisley Fender Tele, using it to coax out an intoxicating mix of both tasty and nasty notes and tones that brought to life songs from across her decades long career. When she wasn't swinging
that particular axe to new songs like the title track from her afore-mentioned Ice Queen album or rebirthing older tunes from previous works, she was equally adept and at home on acoustic.
Describing her apparent total ease in moving around the stage, and her manner of doing so, requires a bigger word than compelling, but I am at a loss for what that word would be. There was a seamless richness and texture that either resulted in or was generated by an evocative dance of
movement and music and magic that enveloped an entire concert and collected it into an elongated moment of indeterminate length that was experienced as shared bliss.
There are lots of stops left on this tour across Canada, back down to the US, and then over to Europe. She is at the top of her game right now, and playing with passion and fire. Can't think of a better blues fix than that, so check her site for tour dates and make your way to one of her shows.